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Meiji Buddhists invited Olcott to Japan, and Dharmapala followed after. The Japanese wanted Olcott to show them ways to resist Christian missionizing, and he insisted that the first step was bringing Buddhist sects in Japan into institutional unity. Dharmapala returned to Japan three times, convinced of Japan’s potential as a civilizing force and its financial capacity to support his efforts to reclaim Bodh Gaya, the place where the Buddha received his Enlightenment. In that cause Dharmapala had to do more than negotiate sectarian differences. He had to convince Japanese Buddhists that India was a real place, not a heavenly one. His meeting with Chigaku Tanaka proved just how unlikely a unified Buddhist world was going to be, revealing how one Nichirenist movement—Kokochukai-—conceptualized the place of India in creating its own united Buddhist world.

This chapter explores how Christianization became an indispensable tool for Afro-Amerindian rebels seeking political legitimacy and continued autonomy on the frontiers of the Spanish empire and within an African diasporic world. Focusing on the period 1577–1617, it considers how clerical intervention and the discourse of religious conversion shaped colonization over time by looking at the case of Esmeraldas maroons on the coast of early colonial Ecuador. By analyzing aspects of marronage and maroon societies in Spanish America, it elucidates how the colonial state resorted to Christian missionizing and conversion as part and parcel of its pacification campaign. It shows that the Esmeraldas maroons deftly navigated both religious intervention and the discourse of Christian conversion in order to situate themselves as the legitimate lords of Esmeraldas.

This chapter explores the mediating position(s) of translocal music in Trinidadian Full Gospel worship. Pentecostalist missionizing, the North American gospel music industry’s presence in Trinidad and Trinidadian cultural politics have set in motion several transitions. Repertorial transition finds congregations moving away from long-meter and revival hymns toward singing North American praise and worship choruses and gospel music. Doctrinal transition—a turn toward the idea of the invisible church—has fostered repertorial transition as a means of generating sonic identification with fellow Christians globally. A demographic transition is also taking place, incorporating East Indian converts into church life as Full Gospel congregations work to ameliorate communal tensions. The repertorial transition addresses the demographics of Full Gospel Trinidad by sidestepping or silencing the predominantly Afro-Creole cultural politics at the national level. Ultimately, the chapter shows how North American gospel music provides a translocal means of facing local transitions in Full Gospel Trinidad.

This chapter addresses the sense of threat that permeated Spanish Jews’ lives, explaining how the Zohar deploys its rhetoric of the Other Side’s evil powers to defame Christians and those who associate with them. Using coded words normally applied to demonic forces, such as “Other,” “Other Side,” “Other God,” and “Kingdom of Idolatry,” the Zohar condemns Christian dominion, gives advice regarding Jewish behavior under Christian oppression, and imagines a future of Jewish empowerment. This rhetoric responds to Christian missionizing, the threat of religious conversion, and the damage to Jewish communities associated with prominent converts who traumatized the Jews of Spain and France during the thirteenth century, such as Paulus Christiani. The chapter also discusses anticonversion teachings that critique Christian celibacy, which the Zohar explains as a divine strategy for Christian containment.

This chapter begins by defining a state raid and looks at the features of state raids on nontraditional religious movements (NRMs). It then turns to the history and background of the American anticult movement (ACM). It describes the early formation of the American ACM and its development into a transnational movement through missionizing efforts and the cultivation of critical networks in Western Europe and elsewhere. These efforts accelerated in the late 1980s during the “white-hot phase” of mobilization. In the United States, the tradition of church-state separation has been a strong impediment to government intrusions into religious liberty, but in France, the residual influence of the Catholic Church and the entrenched tradition of laïcité have worked hand-in-hand to cast les sectes as a genuine threat to society.